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BASEBALL / MLB / MAN ABOUT SPORTS
Sep 24, 2013

Moneyball evolves as A's keep winning

So, you've seen the flick "Moneyball" and now you think you understand how the traditionally low-budget Oakland A's still managed to capture the American League West title again this season.
LIFE / Digital
Sep 24, 2013

Is China after our inventions?

Some things never change. For as long as I can remember, people in the west have been paranoid about the Orient — and about China in particular. I grew up in an ultra-devout Catholic household in rural Ireland and I remember my mother being terrified by what people then called "the yellow peril," by...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Sep 23, 2013

The PTA: a survival guide for foreign parents

PTA — the mere mention of the three initials is enough to elicit a scowl from many a Japanese mother. So how do foreign women cope in such an environment?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Sep 22, 2013

Pacman, Peso and Pyongyang

A few weeks ago, a Kickstarter project was posted on the Internet featuring two young men who went by the names of Pacman and Peso.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Sep 20, 2013

Richard Dawkins: 'I don't think I am strident or aggressive'

On the top floor of Random House's offices in London, the world's number one thinker — according to Prospect magazine's annual poll — walks in from the roof terrace and shakes my hand. Richard Dawkins is a trim 72-year-old with one of those faces that, no matter the accumulation of lines, will always...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Sep 17, 2013

Veggie-heavy diet and yoga shown to slow cell aging

The fountain of youth may simply be a healthy diet and reduced stress after all, not a magic pill or expensive cosmetics.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 15, 2013

Abe's 2020 vision challenged

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared that the Olympics would put Tokyo 'at the center of the world.' But the real question is: Will Japan use the Olympics to join the real world
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Sep 9, 2013

Filmmaker revisits the children of Fukushima's 'Grey Zone'

Ian Thomas Ash has won acclaim and awards at film festivals around the world for 'A2-B-C,' the second of a pair of documentaries about children living in towns a stone's throw from Fukushima No. 1.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 31, 2013

Masterful ode to Liverpool's Shankly

'Red Or Dead" is a masterpiece. David Peace already has a considerable reputation but this massive, painstaking account of the career of Bill Shankly towers above his previous work. It's usual when praising a sports novel for critics to claim that "it's not really about baseball/running/beach volleyball...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 31, 2013

Predicting growth from the path of a cricket ball

Inventing new things is hard. Figuring out how to manage their applications in a sensible manner is even harder.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 26, 2013

Kuroda says stimulus 'starting to exert effects'

Central bankers from Japan and the U.K. predicted their new campaigns to encourage expansion will work, sustaining support for global growth even as the Federal Reserve considers a reduction in stimulus.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Aug 24, 2013

Reflecting at leisure on who we are and where we live

My day job as a professor in Japan offers precious few chances to take a step back from work and give the old brain a bit of free rein. But August is one such golden opportunity.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2013

Deflating the hype on big data

Big data holds the promise of harnessing huge amounts of information to help us better understand the world. But the hype is causing contrarians to fall into hyberbole.
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN WEB WATCH
Aug 20, 2013

Chain stores suffer part-timers' stupidity on the Web

Over the last month or so, the hottest topic on the Japanese Web scene has been inconsiderate and shocking behavior by convenience- and food chain-stores employees who messed about with appliances and food, and then boasted with photos on social media, mainly on Twitter. While the initial so-called enjō...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 17, 2013

Unmissable response to George Orwell's 1946 essay 'Why I Write'

A slender, beautifully bound blue hardback showed up on my desk. Its pages were creamy, its typeface clear in a formal, old-fashioned way. Each page number was picked out in scarlet. It was a book to put Kindle out of business, so covetable that, I almost thought, it scarcely mattered what it contained....
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Aug 13, 2013

Otakon celebrates 20 years of anime fandom in the U.S.

The American anime convention, Otakon ("Otaku Convention"), begins with a costume parade before it officially opens. Last week I had a bird's-eye view of the spectacle from my 14th-floor hotel room in Baltimore, Maryland. An endless army of imaginary characters trudged across the elevated concourse and...
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Aug 12, 2013

MLB chatter sure to increase as Tanaka dominates in NPB

It was Friday morning in Japan when Detroit Tigers pitcher Max Scherzer earned his 17th win of the MLB season.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2013

The new cultural counter-revolution in China

The Chinese Communist Party's promotion these days of Confucianism and Western classical music illustrates the profound transformation this country has made again.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Aug 4, 2013

A year later, couple grapples with life after assault

Thomas "TC" Maslin easily reads to himself the local newspaper or latest issue of the Economist. Reading aloud a simple children's book is another story.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 3, 2013

Murderous disintegration of a marriage is all too believable in first and final novel

Jodi Brett is beautiful, rich and intelligent. A psychotherapist, she is also, as A.S.A. Harrison's debut opens, "deeply unaware that her life is now peaking ... that a few short months are all it will take to make a killer of her." Because her partner of 20 years, Todd Gilbert, never a faithful man,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013
Jul 25, 2013

Storify: Fuji Rock Festival 2013

The Fuji Rock Festival's pre-show matsuri kicked off tonight. Over the next three days, we'll be curating the related tweets and images coming from social media.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 25, 2013

Fox tackles history in 'Emperor'

Actor Matthew Fox saw his career take off in the 1990s with the role of Charlie Salinger in the American TV series "Party of Five," and he gained even more popularity as Jack Shephard, the central character in the innovative series "Lost." Now, though, his performance in the movie, "Emperor," in which...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jul 24, 2013

Weiner admits to more lewd photos

Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman who polls suggest is a leading candidate for mayor of New York, admitted Tuesday that he engaged in a series of sexually explicit communications with a young woman on the Internet.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jul 20, 2013

Swallows' Balentien reflects on All-Star fun, superb start to season

Wladimir Balentien was joking around with Tony Blanco during an interview when he took off his hat to reveal he'd had a large star cut into his hair in celebration of his third All-Star Series appearance in as many seasons.
BUSINESS / Tech / ANALYSIS
Jul 19, 2013

Robots likely to steal jobs from poor, middle class

Computers and cyborgs aren't about to render the American worker obsolete. But they are tilting the U.S. economy more and more in favor of the rich and away from the poor and the middle class, new economic research contends.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jul 13, 2013

Effects will become more obvious as Japan's climate changes

Residents of Japan's big cities, and of Tokyo in particular, are well aware of the heat-island effect — especially now with the onset of summer.
JAPAN / Politics / GAME OF NUMBERS
Jul 11, 2013

Futenma question decisive factor for prefecture's voters

Last in a series
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Jul 10, 2013

Kimo-kawaii: a chronology in 13 steps

If it's hard to look at but harder to look away, it's kimo-kawaii.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Jul 9, 2013

Can METI's ¥50 billion fund unfreeze 'Cool Japan'?

Naysaying is almost always risk-free, especially if you do it online. If you're a cynic, you're usually right, and if you're wrong, you can just delete those errant tweets and posts and join the party.

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan